An Enquiry Into the Life and Legend of Michael Scot (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from An Enquiry Into the Life and Legend of Michael Scot

After some considerable time spent in making collections for the work which is now submitted to the public, I became aware that a biography of Michael Scot was in existence which had been composed as early as the dose of the sixteenth century. This is the work of Bernardino Baldi of Urbino, who was born in 1553. He studied medicine at Padua, but soon turned his attention to mathematics, especially to the historical developments of that science. Taking holy orders, he became Abbot of Guastalla in 1586, and in the quiet of that cloister found time to produce his work 'De le vite de Matematici' of which the biography of Scot forms a part. He died in 1617.

This discovery led me at first to think that my original plan might with some advantage be modified. Baldi had evidently enjoyed great advantages in writing his life of Scot. His time lay nearer to that of Scot by three hundred years than our own does. He was a native of Italy, where so large a part of Scot's life was passed. He had studied at Padua, the last of the great schools in which Averroes, whom Scot first introduced to the Latins, still held intellectual sway.

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