Michael Scot - Career

Career

Scot began his scholarly career as a translator. Frederick II attracted him with many other savants to his brilliant court, and at the instigation of the emperor he superintended (along with Hermannus Alemannus) a fresh translation of Aristotle and the Arabian commentaries from Arabic into Latin. There exist translations by Scot himself of the Historia animalium, of De anima and of De coelo, along with the commentaries of Averroes upon them.

His manuscripts dealt with astrology, alchemy and the occult sciences generally and account for his popular reputation. These works include:

• Super auctorem spherae, printed at Bologna in 1495 and at Venice in 1631
• De sole et luna, printed at Strassburg (1622), in the Theatrum chimicum, and containing more alchemy than astronomy, the sun and moon appearing as the images of gold and silver
• De chiromantia, an opuscule often published in the 15th century
• De physiognomia et de hominis procreatione, which saw no fewer than eighteen editions between 1477 and 1660.

The Physiognomia (which also exists in an Italian translation) and the Super auctorem spherae expressly state that the author undertook the works at the request of the Emperor Frederick.

"Every astrologer is worthy of praise and honour," Scot wrote, "Since by such a doctrine as astrology he probably knows many secrets of God, and things which few know."

He was offered in 1223 the role of being the Archbishop of Cashel in Ireland by Pope Honorius III; then that of Canterbury in 1227 by Pope Gregorious IX.