THE LEGEND OF MICHAEL SCOT — CONCLUSION 207 



manding supernatural power woven by his party 

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

 element of contempt and reproof in his lines, and 

 this must be explained by a point of view which 

 was peculiar to himself. The Commedia, and 

 especially the Inferno, where this passage occurs, is 

 nothing if not a retrospect of the past. In it 

 Dante calls up the mighty dead and subjects them 

 to review ; his principle of judgment being largely, 

 but by no means solely, drawn from political con- 

 siderations. Even more decidedly was it moral, 

 and thus, while in not a few instances he displays 

 the working of party-spirit, in others he permits 

 himself to part altogether with the current Ghibel- 

 line views. 



His reference to Michael Scot, then, is un- 

 doubtedly a case of the latter kind. As a seer 

 whose attention was fixed on the past he was 

 naturally impatient of those who pretended to 

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

 phetical verses, seemed to Dante a fair object for 

 censure, as one who had degraded the sacred art 

 of the bard to serve the purpose of a charlatan. 

 He placed him with Amphiareus, with Teiresias 

 and the other diviners, who, because they sought 

 to pry into the future, appeared to the poet with 

 their heads turned backward in punishment of 

 their presumption. An additional proof that this 

 was in fact the reason for Dante's harsh dealing 

 with Scot may be seen in the Dittamondo of Fazio 

 degli Uberti. This poem, composed towards the 

 end of the fourteenth century, was modelled on the 

 Divine Comedy, and expressly formed to expound 

 it. Here are the lines which correspond in the 



