An enquiry into the life and legend of Michael Scot / by Rev. J. Wood Brown.

  • Brown, J. Wood (James Wood)
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An enquiry into the life and legend of Michael Scot / by Rev. J. Wood Brown. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Englishman, but no one would think of quoting it as of sufficient value to disprove the testimony of Bacon and Bonatti who both believed Michael to have been born in Scotland. If, however, there should offer itself any way in which both these apparently contending opinions can be reconciled, we are surely bound to accept such an explanation of the difficulty, and in fact the solution we are about to propose not only meets the conditions of the problem, but will be found to narrow very considerably the limits of country within which the birthplace of Scot is to be looked for. The See of Durham in that age, and for long afterwards, had a wide sphere of influence, extending over much of the south-eastern part of the Scottish Borders. Many deeds relating to this region of Scotland must be sought in the archives that belong to the English Cathedral. To be born in the territory of Durham then, as Leland says Scot had been, was not necessarily to be a native of England, and the anonymous Florentine commentator on Dante uses a remarkable expression which seems to confirm this solution as far as Scot is concerned. ‘This Michael,’ he says, ‘was of the Province of Scotland’;* and his words seem to point to that part of the Scottish lowlands adjacent to the See of Durham and in a sense its province, as subject to its influence, just as Provence, the analogous part of France, had its name from the similar relation it bore to Rome. The most likely opinion there- fore that can now be formed on the subject leads us to believe that Scot was born somewhere in the 1 Comento alla Divina Commedia, Inf., canto xx. Bologna, Fanfani, 1866-74.
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