Pipini records two other prophecies of Michael Scot which serve to confirm this observation in a high degree.[246] The astrologer, he says, forecast the manner of the Emperor’s death, which was to take place _ad portas ferreas_, at certain gates of iron, in a town named after Flora. This prediction was generally understood of Florence; the rather perhaps that the church of Santo Stefano there was called _ad portam ferream_; and Frederick accordingly avoided coming to that city.[247] During his last campaign in 1250, however, he fell sick at the town of Fiorentino or Firenzola in Apulia, and lay in a chamber of the castle. His bed stood against a wall recently built to fill up the ancient gateway of the tower, while within the wall there still remained the iron staples on which the gate had been hung. Uneasy at the progress of his disease, and hearing something of these particulars, the Emperor fell into deep thought and then exclaimed, ‘This is the place where I shall make an end, as it was told me. The will of God be done; for here I shall die,’ and soon afterwards he breathed his last. The other prediction which the chronicler attributes to Scot relates to the occasion of his own death. This, he said, would take place by the blow of a stone falling on his head. His calculations were so exact as even to furnish him with the precise weight of this instrument of fate. Being in church one day, with head uncovered at the sacring of the Mass, a stone, agreeing in all particulars with his prediction, was shaken from the tower by the motion of the bellrope and wounded Scot to death. There is much in these tales which lies apart from the course of a sober biography; belonging rather to that legendary and mystic fame of the philosopher which we shall immediately proceed to consider. Something, however, in which all these prophecies agree deserves our attention here, and that is their sombre and menacing character. ‘Ruinam predixit,’ says Pipini, referring to Scot’s verses on the Italian cities, and his thoughts, whether engaged with Frederick’s fate or his own, seem at this time to have followed the same dark and ominous course. Death and destruction now filled all his mind, much as if he had been a Highlander gifted with the fatal power of the _Taisch_: a seer to whom all things looked darkly, and all men wore a shroud, longer or shorter, to mark the time and the manner of their end.