1. Michael Scot was a Scottish mathematician and scholar in the Middle Ages.
19 Facts About Michael Scot
1. 2.
Michael Scot was educated at Oxford and Paris, and worked in Bologna and Toledo, where he learned Arabic.
3.
Michael Scot's patron was Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire and Scot served as science adviser and court astrologer to him.
4.
Michael Scot studied first at the cathedral school of Durham and then at Oxford and Paris, devoting himself to philosophy, mathematics, and astrology.
5.
Michael Scot declined this appointment, but he seems to have held benefices in Italy.
6.
From Paris, Michael Scot went to Bologna, and then after a stay at Palermo, to Toledo.
7.
At the instigation of the emperor, Michael Scot supervised a fresh translation of Aristotle and the Arabian commentaries from Arabic into Latin.
8.
Translations by Michael Scot survive of the Historia animalium, De anima, and De caelo, along with the commentaries of Averroes upon them.
9.
Michael Scot asked about the soul; and about volcanoes, rivers, and seas.
10.
Michael Scot replied by saying that either the moon had gotten further away or the tower had gotten shorter.
11.
Michael Scot's manuscripts dealt with astrology, alchemy and the occult sciences generally, and account for his popular reputation.
12.
Michael Scot 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 Gregory IX.
13.
The legendary Michael Scot used to feast his friends with dishes brought by spirits from the royal kitchens of France and Spain and other lands.
14.
Michael Scot is said to have turned a coven of witches to stone, which have become the stone circle of Long Meg and Her Daughters in Cumbria.
15.
Michael Scot appears in Dante's Divine Comedy, the only Scot to do so, in the fourth bolgia located in the Eighth Circle of Hell, reserved for sorcerers, astrologers, and false prophets who claimed they could see the future when they, in fact, could not.
16.
Michael Scot is described by Dante as being "spare in the flank".
17.
Michael Scot had a particular reputation for his ability to predict the future.
18.
In John Leyden's ballad Lord Soulis, Michael Scot is credited with teaching magic to the protagonist, the evil sorcerer William II de Soules, who ends up being boiled alive.
19.
Michael Scot is the title character in the play The Warld's Wonder by Alexander Reid.