‘Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne!’ To such vain and trivial
conclusions has a reputation, justly renowned in its own day, been
reduced in ours. Michael Scot, now become a _troglodyte_, lifts his head
timidly and occasionally from a den in the Florence fields; he who, while
alive, filled Europe with his fame, and, by his _Averroës_, ruled the
schools of Padua as late as the seventeenth century. If a remedy is still
to be had for this, the fruit of Guelphic rancour, it must be found in
the direction we have sought to keep throughout these pages: that of a
serious and impartial study of Scot’s life, and of those labours of his
in philosophy and science which are so really, though remotely, connected
with the intellectual attainments of our own times.
APPENDIX
APPENDIX I
✠ Experimentum Michaelis Scoti nigromantici.[326]
Si volueris per daemones haberi scientem, qui in forma magistri ad te
veniet cum tibi placuerit, expedit tibi primo habere quandam cameram
fulgentem et nitidam, in qua nunquam mulier non conversetur, nec vir ante
inchoationem triginta diebus, computato itaque tempore taliter quod xxxj
die fit luna crescens[327] –o– ☿ eius hora, castus per septimanam, rasus
totus, ac etiam lotus, necnon vestimentis albis indutus. Solus in ortu
solis, in quo, et ipsa hora ☿ habeas quoddam vas in quo sit lignum
aloes camphora et cipressum cum igne, ex quibus fiat fumus, et primo te
totum suffumiga, scilicet primo faciem, deinde alia, postea etiam totam
cameram. Quo facto, habeas oleum bacharum et totum te unge a capite
usque ad pedes, hoc facto, volve te primo versus 🜚 ortum, et sic dic,
flexis genibus: O admirabilis et ineffabilis et incomprehensibilis, Qui
omnia ex nihilo formasti, apud quem nihil impossibile est, te deprecor
cum humilitate vehementi ut mihi, famulo tuo tali, tribuas gratiam
cognoscendi potentiam tuam, Qui vivis et regnas cum Deo Patre per omnia
saecula saeculorum, Amen. Praesta quaesumus mihi tutellam angeli tui,
qui me custodiat, protegat, atque defendat, et adjuvet ad huius operis
consummationem, et faciat me potentem contra omnes spiritus ut vincam
etiam dominer eis, et ipsi adversus me terrendi vel laedendi nullam
habeant potestatem, Amen, [here follow verses 25-28 of Psalm 119.]
Similiter versus occasum, meridiem, et septentrionem, et debes scire
quod, quando vertis te, debes te totum expoliare nudum, deinde dicere has
orationes: quo facto, debes te induere dicendo hunc psalmum, [Psalm 76:
1-.] usque _quomodo cogitatio hominis_, etc. quo dicto, et inducto, dic
tu haec verba [Psalm 37: 30.] Quibus dictis habeas unum frustrum panni
albi de lana, quae nunquam fuerit in usu, et habeas quandam columbam
albam totam vel –o– cuiuscumque coloris sit, et trunca eius collum, et
collige eius sanguinem in vase vitreo, et de dicta columba sive –ͨoͦ–ͬ
sanguinando dictum cor in 1º. o. Fac cum dicto corde cruentato, in dicto
panno, circulum, ut apparet inferius, quo facto, intra circulum cum ense
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