PEEFACE 



AFTER some considerable time spent in making 

 collections for the work which is now submitted to 

 the public, I became aware that a biography of 

 Michael Scot was in existence which had been 

 composed as early as the close of the sixteenth 

 century. This is the work of Bernardino Baldi 

 of Urbino, who was born in 1553. He studied 

 medicine at Padua, but soon turned his attention 

 to mathematics, especially to the historical de- 

 velopments of that science. Taking holy orders, 

 he became Abbot of Guastalla in 1586, and in the 

 quiet of that cloister found time to produce his 

 work ' De le vite de Matematici ' of which the 

 biography of Scot forms a part. He died in 

 1617. 



This discovery led me at first to think that my 

 original plan might with some advantage be 

 modified. Baldi had evidently enjoyed great 

 advantages in writing his life of Scot. His time 

 lay nearer to that of Scot by three hundred years 

 than our own does. He was a native of Italy, 

 where so large a part of Scot's life was passed. 

 He had studied at Padua, the last of the great 

 schools in which Averroes, whom Scot first in- 

 troduced to the Latins, still held intellectual sway. 



