cian," says Benvenuto da Imola, "practised divination at the court of Frederick II., and dedicated to him a book on natural history, which I have seen, and in which among other things he treats of Astrology, then deemed infallible. . . . . It is said, moreover, that he foresaw his own death, but could not escape it. He had prognosticated that he should be killed by the falling of a small stone upon his head, and always wore an iron skull-cap under his hood, to prevent this disaster. But entering a church on the festival of Corpus Domini, he lowered his hood in sign of veneration, not of Christ, in whom he did not believe, but to deceive the common people, and a small stone fell from aloft on his bare head."
The reader will recall the midnight scene of the monk of St. Mary's and William of Deloraine in Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto II.:—
"In these far climes it was my lot
To meet the wondrous Michael Scott;
A wizard of such dreaded fame
That when, in Salamanca's cave,
Him listed his magic wand to wave,
The bells would ring in Notre Dame!
Some of his skill he taught to me;
And, warrior, I could say to thee
The words that cleft Eildon hills in three,
And bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone;
But to speak them were a deadly sin;
And for having but thought them my heart within,
A treble penance must be done."
And the opening of the tomb to recover the Magic Book:—
"Before their eyes the wizard lay,
As if he had not been dead a day.
His hoary beard in silver rolled,
He seemed some seventy winters old;
A palmer's amice wrapped him round,
With a wrought Spanish baldric bound,
Like a pilgrim from beyond the sea;
His left hand held his book of might;
A silver cross was in his right;
The lamp was placed beside his knee:
High and majestic was his look,
At which the fellest fiends had shook,
And all unruffled was his face:—
They trusted his soul had gotten grace."
See also Appendix to the Lay of the Last Minstrel.
118. Guido Bonatti, a tiler and astrologer of Forlì, who accompanied Guido di Montefeltro when he marched out of Forlì to attack the French "under the great oak." Villani, VII, 81, in a passage in which the he and him get a little entangled, says: "It is said that the Count of Montefeltro was guided by divination and the advice of Guido Bonatti (a tiler who had become an astrologer), or some other strategy, and he gave the orders; and in this enterprise he gave him the gonfalon and said, 'So long as a rag of it remains, wherever thou bearest it, thou shalt be victorious'; but I rather think his victories were owing to his own wits and his mastery in war."
Benvenuto da Imola reports the following anecdote of the same personages. "As the Count was standing one day in the large and beautiful square of Forlì, there came a rustic mountaineer and gave him a basket of pears. And when the Count said, 'Stay and sup with me,' the rustic answered, 'My Lord, I wish to go home before it
