Michael Scot

Michael Scot (Latin: Michael Scotus; 1175 – c. 1232) was a Scottish mathematician and scholar in the Middle Ages.

Scot was born somewhere in the border regions of Scotland or northern England. It has been claimed that he studied first at the cathedral school of Durham and then at Oxford and Paris, devoting himself to philosophy, mathematics, and astrology. It appears that he had also studied theology and become an ordained priest, as Pope Honorius III wrote to Stephen Langton on 16 January 1223/4, urging him to confer an English benefice on Scot, and nominated Scot as archbishop of Cashel in Ireland. Scot declined this appointment, but he seems to have held benefices in Italy. From Paris, Scot went to Bologna, and then after a stay at Palermo, to Toledo. There he learnt Arabic well enough to study the Arabic versions of Aristotle and the many commentaries of the Arabs upon these, as well as the original works of Avicenna and Averroes.

Scot was a typical example of the polyglot wandering scholar of the Middle Ages—a churchman who knew Latin, Greek, Arabic and Hebrew. When he was about 50, Frederick II attracted him to his court in the Kingdom of Sicily, 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 caelo, along with the commentaries of Averroes upon them.

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