The sole glory which Cordova still retained in the days when Scot visited it was the memory of departed greatness, and of Averroës, whose fame must yet have endured as a living tradition in the place of his birth and burial. We may therefore believe that it was as a pilgrim to the shrine of that illustrious name that the traveller came hither. As he wandered amid the countless columns of the great Mosque, or stayed his steps by the tomb of Ibn Abbas, he must have found a melancholy pleasure in recalling the mighty past, when these aisles were crowded with eager students and when, still later, the last scion of the Cordovan schools had appeared in the person of the Master whose writings were now the object of so much curiosity. It is quite possible that something of a practical purpose may have combined with these sentiments to determine the direction of Scot’s journey. Twenty years had not passed, we must remember, since the body of Averroës was laid in its last resting-place. What if those who directed and composed the solemn funeral procession from Morocco to Cordova had brought with them the books which the philosopher was engaged in completing at the time of his death? The hope of a great literary discovery could hardly have been absent from the mind of Michael Scot as he travelled southward to seek the white walls of the Moorish city.[160] There is no reason to think that the story of the spell framed by Scot at Cordova was literally and historically true; it seems to belong rather to the department of his legendary fame as a necromancer. Yet, read as a parable, this conjuration is not without interest and perhaps importance. It professes to compel the appearance of spirits from the nether deep, and to command an answer to any question the sage or student might choose to ask. A slight effort of fancy will find here the picturesque representation of Scot’s mental and physical state while at Cordova, and especially under the stress of the illness from which we are assured he then suffered.[161] What wonder if, in the vertigo of fever, he felt prisoned with swimming brain in magic circles; or is it strange that one so intent upon the doctrine of the departed Averroës should, in the height of his delirium, have planned to force the grave itself, and summon the dead philosopher to tell the secret of his lost works? Something of the Greek δεινότης, something terrible, superhuman almost, we discover in a spirit so fully roused and determined, and if we have read rightly the mind of Scot, no wonder that he and the Emperor were fully at one in regard to what they had to do. We have no means of knowing which of the two first conceived the idea of translating the works of Averroës: as master and servant they fairly share the fame of that great enterprise. It was one which demanded, not only means, talent, and unwearied labour, but high courage as well, considering the suspect character of that philosophy and the censures under which it already lay.