SCOT AGAIN AT COURT 145 



the Arabs. The Optica of Ptolemy were already 

 translated into Latin from an Arabic version by 

 Eugenio, admiral to King Robert of Sicily during 

 the twelfth century, 1 and mathematical instruments 

 were known in that kingdom whereby angles could 

 be taken and measured with some nicety. Scot 

 must have possessed such an astrolabe and the 

 skill to use it with great delicacy, if we have 

 rightly read the terms of the problem he solved so 

 unhesitatingly. There is no cause for wonder 

 then in the fact that, where pure and legitimate 

 astronomy was concerned, this philosopher, who 

 had won fame in his student days as the mathe- 

 matician of Paris, who was now widely known as 

 the translator of Alpetrongi, and who as a keen 

 observer and ready calculator was well qualified for 

 original research, should have taken a high place in 

 these studies on his own account, and should have 

 come to be acknowledged as a master in them. 

 Even Bacon, who blamed Michael Scot so bitterly 

 when language or philosophy were in question, 

 speaks in a different way here, calling him a 

 ' notable inquirer into matter, motion, and the 

 course of the constellations/ 



This well-earned celebrity may have been owing 

 in no small degree to a mathematical and astro- 

 nomical work produced by the philosopher after his 

 return to court. Sacrobosco, the famous English 

 astronomer, had just risen into notice by his 

 treatise on the Sphere. This book was not indeed 

 very remarkable in itself, but it obtained an extra- 

 ordinary currency during the Middle Ages, and after 



1 MSS. of this work are in Paris, Ancien Fonds, 7310; Milan, 

 Ambrosiana, T. 100 ; Florence, Bibl. Naz. xi. D. 64, n. ii. 35, and 

 Home, Fondo Vaticano, 2975. 



K 



